


First Day Back

by fraternite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Family Drama, Gen, Stress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3132455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Courfeyrac is not ready for another semester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Day Back

"So," the professor said, shuffling the stack of syllabi together and tapping them on the table to line them up evenly. "I trust you all got in all your relaxing and recuperating over the break, and you're ready and rarin' for another great semester of hard work!"

A ripple of laughs ran around the classroom, but they were mostly giggles of amusement; Courfeyrac's harsh, involuntary bark of sarcasm stood out among them. His neighbors glanced at him, and Courfeyrac ducked his head and pretended to be doodling in the margins of his notebook.

The syllabus came around slowly, and by the time it got to Courfeyrac the professor had already outlined three out of six major projects and announced that they'd only be skipping two chapters of the textbook. Two of the projects were group projects; another one involved interviewing people outside the school. There was a midterm and a final _and_ a sixteen-page research paper. Courfeyrac hadn't even _looked_ at the syllabus yet and he was already overwhelmed.

And he had five other classes.

Desperate for distraction, even though it was a bit like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, he opened up his laptop and got on facebook. Ordinarily, he wouldn't get on his computer during class; even though he liked to be able to look up unfamiliar words or bookmark the books and articles the professor suggested, and even though he was able to scroll his newsfeed  _and_ listen to a lecture at the same time, Courfeyrac was aware that many of his professors didn't see it the same way. He didn't like to make people feel disrespected (even if it was based on their interpretation and not fact), so he usually left his computer in his backpack. Besides, this was syllabus day. What would he even be taking notes on? 

Still, it was a better option than staring at the list of assignments and feeling his heartrate rise and rise and rise. (And he could have been transfering due dates into his google calendar, right? There were legitimate interpretations.)

When the new years party pictures and year-in-review posts and resolution statuses started to get too boring to have much power of distraction, Courfeyrac made the mistake of checking his email. There was a message there from Enjolras, addressed to their whole group of friends.

_hey_

_just wanted to let you all knwo I got here safe. My second flight was delayed by eight houjs, no explanaiton giving--but we're here now so it's all fine. The student housing seems fun; there are a lot of inetrnationals on my hall from all over. my roommates are form Germany and Egypt!_

_and now Ive be awake for 40 hours and my body has no idea whattime it is anymore so i'm goinh to crash._

_Love,_

_Enjolras_

Courfeyrac's eyes swam with tears and he slammed the laptop shut a little more violently than he'd intended. Maybe in an hour he'd laugh at it--at the image of Enjolras sitting cross-legged on a sheetless dormitory mattress, nodding off over his laptop as he typed the hasty little note; at how different it is from the rambling, eight-paragraph email Combeferre sent two days earlier, describing everything he'd seen and heard and tasted on his first day in India. Because it  _was_ funny--and he  _was_ so excited for both of them, for everything they were going to experience and learn this semester.

But just then, the emails were just reminders, making it  _real_ that Courfeyrac's two best friends were currently on the opposite side of the world. And that they were having amazing, life-changing experiences, while here everything was the same as always, with syllabi and group projects and club leadership and sleep deprivation--everything except the two of them.

A semester's only fourteen weeks, he kept telling himself. But right now, fourteen seemed like more than he could handle.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Courfeyrac was greeted by name by no fewer than five people as he walked into the student center's sandwich bar to start his first shift of the semester. Everyone who worked in this building knew him--the janitorial staff, the tellers at the tiny little bank branch in the basement, the student DJs in the closetlike radio studio, the post office workers. Half the people _on campus_ knew Courfeyrac; Grantaire laughed at him for it sometimes, the way he couldn't wander down a single hallway on campus without being greeted by at least one person. ( _Courf, this is the art dungeon; we don't even talk to_ each other _down here!_ ) Already today, Courfeyrac had had a dozen conversations, all going something like this:

"Hey, Coufeyrac! How was your break?"

"Too short, haha; thanks for asking. How was yours/your Christmas/your cruise/time with your kids?"

"It was really busy/nice/tiring. It's good to see you back; have a great semester!"

Because everyone knew Courfeyrac--and they all knew him as the cheerful, funny kid who always remembered everyone's names and who was always smiling. He didn't want to disappoint.

And so he went through his shift on autopilot, trusting muscle memory to keep the grin on his face, making small talk with customers almost automatically. He volunteered for inventory duty in the walk-in cooler almost embarassingly quickly, just for the chance to spend an hour alone, away from people. For an hour he went through the milk products and soft drinks, sorting out the ones that had gone past their expiration date over the break, noting down how many remained of each. He came out shivering and no more ready to do this whole thing than he was before.

After what seemed like eight hours instead of four, his shift was over and he was free to go. But even then, he wasn't free--his coworker Duong had finished at the same time, and he lived in the same housing complex as Courfeyrac, and it would have just been awkward to walk back at the same time but not together. After all, they were friends--not close friends, but they'd worked Monday lunch together since the beginning of the school year, bonding over weird sandwich orders ("Mustard and pickles on a grilled cheese, who _does_ that?" "They just kept asking for extra mayo--I finally had to stop him and say 'Sir, I'm sorry, I literally cannot put any more mayonaise in a wrap, the laws of physics will not allow it.'") A bond forged over grilled cheese wasn't exactly something you'd die for, but it was enough to call for Courfeyrac to wait the thirty seconds it took Duong to get himself a coffee before they headed out.

The same post-winter-break conversation played itself out as they walked back to their apartments.

"How was your break, Duong?"

"It was very nice, thanks for asking. Some of my friends and I went to New York City and we watched the ball descend. It was . . ." Duong laughed a little sheepishly. "I'm not sure I understand why it's so important. The trip was a lot of fun, but it was cold and crowded in the city, and we could hardly see."

"I think a lot of people just watch it on TV," Courfeyrac said. "I've never actually gone to the city to see it. Last year we forgot to turn the TV on at all."

"Well, yes, I'm glad we went, anyway--but I probably won't do it again next year. How about you, how was your break?"

"It was--" How was his break, really? He'd been saying all day that it was too short, and in a way that was true, because he still felt just as exhausted and strung out as he had on the last day on finals; he certainly hadn't gotten in the relaxing he'd been hoping for over the break.

But part of why he felt so worn out was that break this year had been kind of a little bit horrible. Not _terribly_ horrible, not _very_ bad like some people had--the badness had been so very low-key that Courfeyrac almost felt guilty being upset or worn out about it, because he knew some people had so much worse. Still, it _had_ been exhausting.

But how did he express that without majorly TMIing someone who wasn't really a close friend, just a good acquaintance? How did he explain that the fourteen days of break had taken almost as much from him as the fourteen  _weeks_ of the fall semester, without describing the constant stress of analyzing every comment and gesture to try to guess where things stood between his parents, straining his ears to listen for the sound of the bedroom door opening in the morning so he'd know whether it had been a Good Night or a Bad Night, watching every word he spoke to make sure nothing he said contributed to the problems or reminded anyone of any of the things they were all so carefully Not Talking About? How did he describe his Christmas to Duong without including the half hour he spent crying in the bathroom because he just wanted to go back to when he was a little boy and everything was simple and cozy and okay?

Courfeyrac sighed. "It was too short."

  
  


* * *

  
  


To Courfeyrac's relief, his new roommates weren't home when he got back. The people Res Life had found to fill the vacant spaces in the apartment were _nice_ , they really were. Joseph was a studious, reserved mathematics major who had been studying abroad in Germany for the fall semester; he'd brought some nice houseplants and rugs and lamps which filled the aparment with a slightly classier atmosphere, but Joseph himself hadn't been around much so far. Godswill was a transfer student from a university in South Africa. He seemed friendly enough, but Courfeyrac hadn't yet had an interaction with him in which he didn't seem about to fall asleep on his feet. Still, they were both nice enough.

They just weren't Enjolras and Combeferre.

Courfeyrac changed out of his work clothes, poured himself a bowl of cereal, and sat down on the couch with his laptop to check his email. There were a dozen new ones: Three were general university spam, one was actual spam spam, two were reminders from clubs that he was technically a member of but couldn't manage to work up any interest in now, two more were emails from professors letting the students in their classes know that they were going to jump right into class tomorrow so could the students please read the attached syllabus at home?, and one was a call for submissions from an undergraduate conference. He clicked through them without actually reading anything. Of the three he actually had to pay attention to, one was a reminder to student organization leaders that they needed to submit their budgets for the spring semester by Thursday or lose all their funding; Courfeyrac almost deleted this before realizing why it was in his inbox in the first place--with Enjolras and Combeferre gone, he was the sole remaining co-leader of the ABC group.

The next-to-last email was a message from Joly to their whole group of friends:

_Hey all,_

_Dinner at our apartment tonight? 6:15? I'm so excited to hang out with you all again! I missed you over break!_

_Love,_

_Joly [and Bossuet and Grantaire]_

_p.s. I know a lot of people have commitments early tomorrow, but for those that don't, Chetta got this amaaaazing game for Christmas and if you can stick around to learn it you will NOT regret it!_

There was one follow-up email, a reply-all from Feuilly which read:

_I'll be there! I missed you guys too and I'm looking forward to seeing you. I hope you had a good break!_

_Love,_

_Feuilly_

Courfeyrac replied quickly to Joly's message say that he was coming, then finally opened the final email, which was, of course, another message from Combeferre. It was another long one, a dozen paragraphs about the courses he was taking and his host family and the other students in the program; he complained about the constant noise in Mumbai, and told a funny story about a small but important difference between U.S. English and Indian English. and waxed eloquent about the sense of purpose and relevance and excitement that infuses all the learning he was doing. Courfeyrac got through about one paragraph before he started to cry.

He retreated to his top bunk and crawled under the covers and worked his way through the email, one paragraph at a time, trying to fill his head with the image of Combeferre, jet-lagged and excited and so, so happy.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He fell asleep and ended up being late to dinner, but it didn't really matter because Bossuet was just pulling the scalloped potatoes out of the oven when Courfeyrac shuffled in at 6:40 with his hair sticking up in the back and a weird mark on his cheek from falling asleep on the corner of his laptop.

"Courfeyrac!" Joly crowed and came running from the other side of the apartment to crush him in a hug. "I missed you, how was your break?"

"It was fine," Courfeyrac mumbled.

Joly's forehead creased in concern. "It doesn't sound very fine," he murmured. "Is everything okay?"

"I just woke up from a nap," Courfeyrac explained, and Joly still looked worried, but just then Musichetta called them to come eat right away so that Cosette wouldn't be late for choir, and Grantaire tried to get to the table by parkouring over the back of a couch and ended up almost flipping it over onto Jehan, and in the ensuing scuffle Courfeyrac sat himself down at a corner of the table and Joly let it be for now.

Dinner was loud and messy and cheerful, with everyone talking at the same time and laughing at  _everything._ Joly wasn't the only one who was glad to see everyone again; Grantaire looks a lot perkier than when Courfeyrac bumped into him briefly that morning, and you could practically see Feuilly glowing, he was so happy to be back from break. 

Winter break, as always, had been a mixed bag among the group. Bahorel talked excitedly about snowshoeing in the White Mountains and Cosette described getting cozily snowed in on the next-to-last night of Hannukah, just days after getting home, and Jehan had come back from Hawaii more relaxed than ever--but Eponine didn't say anything about her break at all, and everyone knew but didn't mention that Joly hadn't exactly talked to his parents since Thanksgiving. It was easy to slip into the background of all the chaos, and so Courfeyrac did so, focusing on his dinner as if potatoes and cheese were the secret to all his problems. (Who knew, maybe they were. They were at least simple to deal with: Potatoes on fork, fork to mouth, repeat until gone.)

Marius came in, face pink from the cold, just in time to give Cosette a quick peck on the lips before she ran off for choir rehearsal.

"Where were you?" Jehan asked him as he climbed over the back of the chair Cosette had just vacated (with so many people squeezed in at the table, getting into chairs in the normal way was a physical impossibility).

Marius's cheeks turned even pinker, and with anyone else, Courfeyrac would have guessed the answer was a cover for going to a strip club or a foot modeling gig--but this was Marius. "I was tutoring. There's an afterschool program that serves children of migrant farm workers, and I decided to help out. I'm going there every Monday and Wednesday, so tonight was the first night."

"That's so cool!" Bahorel passed the remaining broccoli down the table in Marius's direction. "How did it go?"

"Good! Well, I got lost on the way there. And I didn't really know what I was doing. But, I think, it'll be good. It seems like a really good program. And it was fun, even if, um, even if it was hard."

"What's the program called?"

"Bright Horizons? It's this really little thing that meets in the basement of a church."

"I've never heard of them," Musichetta said. "How'd you find out about them?"

"Online. I just googled community organizations in this area, and they were one of the things that came up. Thanks." Marius took the glass of water Bossuet handed him. "I just wanted to do something, something . . . practical, I guess. We talk about so much stuff in the ABC group and it sometimes can be really, um, depressing? So I wanted to do something that might help remind me that some things are changing. It's one of my New Year's resolutions."

"That's a really great resolution--much better than mine. I just resolved not to lose my student ID so often." Bossuet laughed. "Well, that and learn contact juggling, but I'm not sure how that's going to happen. On second thought, I'm not sure how  _either_ of them is going to happen."

And with that, the conversation turned to the subject of New Year's resolutions. Most of Courfeyrac's friends had resolved something, although they ran the gamut from specific, achievable things to lofty, esoteric goals. Jehan had resolved to become more in tune with the lives of plants, to memorize "The Waste Land," and to learn to cook. Musichetta had decided to start doing yoga; Eponine was going to save up to buy a car. Joly's resolution was to get over his squeamishness about needles in preparation for clinicals in the fall ("You know what that means for us," Grantaire said darkly, pulling down his sweatshirt sleeves to protect his arms). Bahorel and Bossuet and Grantaire didn't have any resolutions--the first two because they preferred to take life as it came rather than planning ahead, and Grantaire because he was "too goddamn lazy for that shit."

Courfeyrac hadn't made any resolutions, but when Feuilly shared that one of his resolutions was to start running (because it was good exercise, and you could do it anywhere; you didn't have to have any special equipment or gear), Courfeyrac thought that maybe he should do something like that. Exercise was supposed to give you more energy and have a good effect on your mood, wasn't it? He said something about how he was thinking about trying to start jogging or something like that, and before he knew it, he had committed to go running with Feuilly the next morning at 6:30.

But in a way, it was fortunate--because the early morning plans gave Courfeyrac an out when dinner was finished and Joly brought out Musichetta's card game.

"It's really easy," he said, as they cleared off the dishes. "Well, that is, it's really complicated. But it's not so bad once you've learned the rules. And it's a lot of fun! Basically, it's a game about the wild West, and everyone is either the sherrif or the deputy or an outlaw--or a renegade, their job is just to kill everyone but themselves--and you either want the sherrif dead or all the outlaws dead. And everyone also has a character they play as, and all the names are  _puns_ , it's great. There's 'Flint Westwood,' and 'John Pain,' for John Wayne, you know, and 'Youl Grinner,' and, and . . ."

"And Greg Digger, who gets extra health when other people die," Musichetta put in.

"Don't worry," Bossuet said to Eponine, who was looking extremely dubious. "It's not a role-playing game, I promise. You don't have to actually act like the character or anything, it just gives you a special power--ah, that is, a special rule that applies only to you." Then he leaned over the table and said in a stage whisper to Bahorel, "however, if you  _want_ do to a voice for your character, there's no rule  _against_ it."

"So--who's in?" Joly asked, opening up the box.

"Uh, I don't know," Marius said. "It sounds interesting, but I do have a lot of homework. I didn't get anything done this afternoon because of the tutoring thing."

"That's fine," Joly told him. "We'll play again, I'm positive."

"I'll play!" Feuilly called from the kitchen, where he was drying dishes. "It sounds like fun."

"I'm going to have to pass," Courfeyrac said, standing up and looking around for his coat. "I have a lot of stuff to get done--and I have to get up early tomorrow because  _someone_ convinced me to go running with him."

"That sounds absolutely miserable," Jehan said. "What kind of horrible person would do that to someone else--or to themselves?"

Feuilly laughed. "See you tomorrow, Courf!"

"Okay, have a good night!" Joly said brightly. He bounced up from the table and weaved his way around the chairs to wrap Courfeyrac in a hug. "Sleep well," he murmured.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Courfeyrac slept like a rock and woke up slowly, in denial about the whole process. He felt exhausted, as if he hadn't slept at all, although a vague nagging at the edge of his awareness observed that it was already bright enough out that he must have slept for more than seven hours. His head ached for some reason, and his limbs felt like lead. A part of him wondered if he could just roll over and put his pillow over his head and pretend Tuesday didn't exist.

Another, more pedantic, part of him pointed out that he wasn't actually lying on his pillow, but on something slick and plasticky. A few minutes gruding thought observed that it was the living room couch--right, he had fallen asleep there--and that his neck was stiff from the unaccustomed angle. He vaguely remembered sprawling on the couch to do his reading for Adult Development, flicking the TV on to cover up the sound of the wrong voices coming from the bedroom; he'd ended up failing both to get through the chapter and to distract himself from all the things he didn't want to think about. More faintly, he remembered flipping through the channels, loathe to actually go to bed; drifting off in front of Iron Chef America reruns only to be jolted back awake by Joseph gently asking if he'd meant to go to sleep in front of the TV; pushing himself into awakeness enough to wave his roommate off. Some time around reaching this awareness, Courfeyrac realized what that faint nagging in the back of his mind was trying to tell him: It was full daylight already, and he'd promised to meet Feuilly at 6:30.

Knowing he owed a big apology but still not really ready to be awake, Courfeyrac rolled over in a somewhat sluggish thrash of limbs and pushed himself up to sit up. He yawned and dug between the couch cushions for his phone.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," said a quiet voice from the dining room/kitchen part of the apartment. Courfeyrac looked up to see Feuilly sitting at the table, a textbook and an array of looseleaf paper spread out before him. "How'd you sleep?"

"On me back, Mush," Courfeyrac replied, the response automatic and mirthless. He got up and stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"Soil mechanics homework."

"Okay, yes. How  _long_ have you been doing that here?"

"Only about an hour. Before that it was Materials Selection." Feuilly smiled innocently, but then relented and answered the question Courfeyrac was really asking. "I've been here since about quarter to seven. I ran into your roommate on his way out, and he let me in. I hope that's okay."

Courfeyrac glanced at the microwave clock. "Oh my god, it's almost ten! I'm so sorry; I don't even have a good excuse. I just . . . didn't set an alarm. But why didn't you wake me up?"

Feuilly shrugged. "I was going to. But you seemed like you needed the sleep more than you needed the run." He hesitated. "You were really quiet at dinner last night. And you fell asleep on the couch. Are you . . . is everything okay?"

Courfeyrac sighed and dropped into a chair across from Feuilly. "I don't know--maybe--not really?"

"Did something happen over break?"

"No. It was just--all the same shit with my parents." Feuilly moved to the chair diagonal from Courfeyrac, putting a hand on his shoulder. Courfeyrac shut his eyes and plowed on. "They've always fought a lot, but I think it's more, now that the last of us kids has moved out. They don't fight in front of us, at least not over a short break like winter break--but that almost makes it worse, you know? Because we don't know how bad it might be, but we can imagine. And the tension in the whole house is so thick and it--and you're always analyzing everything they say to try to figure out if they're made at each other, and, and rethinking anything you want to say so that you don't accidentally say something that will set them off again, and . . . it was just exhausting." He dropped his head into his hands. "I'm not ready to do another semester," he muttered, his voice muffled by his fingers.

"I'm sorry," Feuilly said. He gently rubbed between Courfeyrac's shoulder blades. "That sounds horrible."

"And then with Enjolras and Combeferre gone, things are so different, and . . ."

"I miss them too," Feuilly said. "I'm really happy for the opportunities they're getting, but it's weird not having them here. And it must be even harder for you, you three are so close."

"And I'm worried about the ABC group," Courfeyrac added, raising his head, "because the shit that came up over the fall at the protests was so tough, and it took all three of us to manage it. And what if something happens this semester?"

"You don't have to do it by yourself, you know."

"I know--I know everyone in the group is wonderful and will help out--and we might not even have any problems this spring; all that stuff came out of nowhere. But." Courfeyrac sighed. "I just--after last semester, and with Enj and Combeferre leaving, I just really needed a break." His voice broke a little on the last bit.

"And you didn't get one."

Courfeyrac nodded, tears stinging his eyes. Feuilly put an arm around him, and Courfeyrac dropped his head to Feuilly's shoulder. "I'm really sorry," Feuilly said. "I wish things weren't so bad at home; it really sucks that you have to go through that. And then to come back to school and not have your best friends there for you . . ."

He squeezed Courfeyrac's shoulder. "I wish we could stop time and all of us could go away for a  _real_ break--go up to the mountains, rent a cabin. Have a fireplace, go stargazing. Spend hours reading with the snow falling outside. Play Chetta's new game until we actually understood the rules. And we wouldn't come back until everyone was fully caught up on sleep and relaxed and ready to do another semester."

"That would be so nice," Courfeyrac murmured.

"But--" Feuilly began, and sighed.

"But," Courfeyrac agreed.

"At least you . . . well, you have all of us?" Feuilly offered. "I know we're not Enjolras and Combeferre--and it's okay that it's them you really need. But we'll do the best we can."

Courfeyrac smiled wearily and returned Feuilly's hug. "No, you're not Enjolras or Ferre, but you're equally important, okay? I'm really, really lucky to have you."

Feuilly laughed softly. "And we're lucky to have you." He pulled away from the hug to meet Courfeyrac's eyes. "It's just fourteen weeks. You'll get through it--I know you can."

 


End file.
